Pages

Friday, February 26, 2016

Poetry Friday -- Boiled Eggs

What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn’t as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.

My environmental club kids were getting ready to create short videos of a bunch of the suggestions in 31 Ways To Change the World. They were having a hard time understanding how knowing your food could change the world, so I shared this poem with them, and then we thought about where our snack had come from -- fresh apples perhaps from last year's harvest in Washington state (and the machinery, trucks, and boxes to get them to us); apple juice (the apples, plus juicing machinery and plastic packaging for the cup); even just the box for our cereal bars (trees grown, harvested, ground and pulped, plus ink and machines to fold and fill and label each box). Maybe if we start with this kind of appreciation, we can raise kids who will make more mindful purchases and eat healthier (both for themselves and the environment).

27 comments:

Cool. Just so cool. In 2nd we are thinking about the three kinds of resources needed to create the technology tools we consider important enough to research (shoes, glasses, clocks and books--my favorite), and we are also speculating on how we could use those resources to grow a plant on the moon. This poem takes us there and farther! (And once again I lament the fact that we'll never teach together in daily life...)

Have y'all read Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar, by George Shannon? http://amzn.to/1R6HrBE It's an awesome rhyming picture book that made me think a lot about what went in to something so "simple."

I truly love the idea of getting kids to think about where their food comes from, and how it gets to them. Brava!

On a related note, I no longer boil my eggs. I stick about a half dozen in my toaster oven at 350-ish for about 30 minutes, then shut it off and let them cool down. They're just like regular hard-boiled eggs! (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

Love the understatement in "This isn’t as easy as it seems." What I'm really longing for, though, is some of that "political peace." Thanks for sharing this, Mary Lee, and for always sharing your brilliant teaching strategies!

Yikes. How embarrassing is it to get to Saturday morning and realize that you neglected to include the link for readers to continue reading the rest of the poem?!?! (sigh) Oh, well, at least the rest of you will be able to easily access the full poem.

This reminds me somehow of that old nursery rhyme, For Want of a Nail. Reminds us how vital the simple and commonplace actually are. How getting the things we need depends on us all doing our parts in the larger world. Very profound and a great lesson for kids.

Came by in time to read the (linked) whole poem (one benefit of reading these late...) Great poem and thoughts to go with it, Mary. Things are never as simple as they appear at first blush. I was reminded of that as well when I recently read a book about early aboriginal life in Canada (The Orenda), and then imagining my life without the internet. Is there actually a way out of this maze?

What an important project; how blessed your students are!...Totally mind-boggling to think about our interconnectedness, and how we usually neglect to think about it! I love "The Quiet Life" poem for the well-needed noise it makes to wake us from our complacency, indifference, and ignorance! ...Speaking of connectedness: a bonus for me: an introduction to the Writer's Almanac, hosted by someone whose quote I used to accompany my email signature. Thank you for the link to the poem that led to that amazing resource!!! God bless you.

We're Both NCTE Members

We Are Proud Members of the Kidlitosphere

Kidlitosphere Central: The Society of Bloggers in Children's and Young Adult Literature --click the button to visit the website

We Are ALSO Proud Members of the Nerdy Book Club

Celebrate!

About Us

Franki and Mary Lee are both teachers, and have been for more than 20 years.

Franki is a third grade teacher. She is also the author of Beyond Leveled Books (Stenhouse), Still Learning to Read (Stenhouse), Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop (Scholastic) and The Joy of Planning (Choice Literacy). She is also a regular contributor to Choice Literacy.

Mary Lee is a fifth grade teacher. She is also the author of Reconsidering Read-Aloud (Stenhouse) and has poems in the Poetry Friday Anthology, the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, and the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science (Pomelo Books).